Come to Morning through the Shadows
by kalina16
Summary: Tauriel. Daughter of the forest - it's a fitting name, considering the forest is her home. It's only in leaving it that she realizes she has a habit of placing home not in places, but in people. Slight canon Kili/Tauriel, but predominantly Legolas/Tauriel.


**Taking a quick break from my other stories for this - this is for Reiya Lostariel (aka tumblr user thedeadlygamora), because I actually feel some guilt for tagging her in those Kili/Tauriel posts. It's more slightly angsty rambling then anything, but Tauriel is awesome so I hope this does her some semblance of justice :P Contains slight Kili/Tauriel (as much as is canon) but predominately Legolas/Tauriel.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Tauriel. Daughter of the forest.

It's a fitting name, she supposes – Tauriel of the forest, where she's spent most of her life. She was born in the forest, learned to shoot a bow in the forest, decided who she wanted to be (or thought she wanted to be) in the forest – more importantly, however, she found her first friend in the forest.

She is merely a child when she stumbles on the young elf huddled up in a tree, drawn so far into himself she cannot tell where tangled blonde hair begins and scuffed up boots end. She frowns, staring up at the branches, as the tiniest sound of sniffling reaching her ears. Elves rarely cry, if at all. Such emotion isn't necessarily frowned upon – just… unusual.

At any rate, she's certainly not going to stand around while some young elf sits up crying in a tree, she thinks stubbornly as she grabs onto the lowest branch. It creaks ominously as she pulls herself up, and the sniffling stops abruptly.

"Go away."

Tauriel looks up, meeting the tear-stained face of the boy briefly before he yanks his head back. It's enough.

"You're the prince!" she exclaims, surprised. Then- "That is not a very nice thing to tell someone."

"I do not care," the boy says sullenly, voice muffled. His head is in his knees again. Tauriel continues climbing.

"Well, you cannot tell me what to do," she huffs, struggling on another branch.

"Yes, I can," the boy says, looking down at her again. "I am the prince, remember?"

"Then where's your crown?" Tauriel says, a hint of fire in her voice. "You cannot stop me."

The boy continues to watch her as she draws closer to him, focusing on the next branch, her feet careful on the slender branches. She's nearly reached him when the boy's voice cuts across the clearing, panicked.

"Not that one!"

His warning is a second too late – she tries to pull herself up with the thin branch and it snaps under her hands, her mouth opening in a silent cry of shock as she plummets.

She's right in the middle of imagining what she'd look like as a splat on the ground when a hand grabs her wrist and her fall stops _abruptly._

This time the cry does escape her, her heart beating fast as she stares at the ground swaying beneath her feet. She looks up, suddenly very conscious of the tight, warm grip on her arm.

"Would you mind," the boy asks, face tight but determined as he grips her. "Putting your legs somewhere?"

Tauriel snaps into action, swinging her feet onto a thick branch. The boy gently sets her hands on another branch and she grips it tightly.

"Thank you," she says, still shaking. The boy shakes his head.

"I wouldn't have let you fall," he says seriously. She can see traces of the Elvenking in the set of his jaw. The illusion shatters as his face breaks into a tiny, amused smile.

"You really should watch where you climb, though, red."

It takes a minute for his words to sink in, but when they do Tauriel flushes.

"I am an excellent climber, sir prince," she snaps. "And I wouldn't have needed to watch if you had not been crying up there!"

The boy's face darkens, and Tauriel feels a stab of guilt.

"I am sorry," she says softly after a minute. "It is not my place."

She looks down, preparing to make a break for the ground and find somewhere she can hide her reddening face – but the boy's voice brings her gaze up again.

"Don't go," he says, slightly panicked, looking like he actually cares whether she stays or not. "I did not mean to insult you."

Tauriel halts, hands still gripping the branch he left her on.

"I just-" he pauses, looking sad. Tauriel wishes he would smile again. "I wish everyone would stop saying that. That it is not their place."

Tauriel studies him, noting the sheer loneliness written clearly across his face, the deep sadness in his blue (_like the king's, she thinks_) eyes. He looks away, shoulders slumping again.

"Do you want to come hunt spiders with me?" she asks suddenly. The boy jerks, staring at her with wide eyes.

"There are no spiders _to _hunt in the Greenwood," he says weakly, as if he cannot think of anything else to say. Tauriel smirks.

"That is what they want us to think," she says, leaning closer to him conspiratorially. "But I have heard that they are regrouping, preparing to attack the unsuspecting innocents. They lurk in the darkness, drawing closer, creeping in on us from the shadowssss."

She draws the _S_ out for dramatic effect, enjoying the slightly worried look that crosses the boy's face as he glances around at the shadows in the forest.

"Or we could look for trolls!" she adds brightly.

The boy stares at her in disbelief. He shakes his head and his lips twitch into that small smile again, and Tauriel smiles back, wide and easy.

"I suppose that could be… enjoyable," he says slowly.

"Anything is more enjoyable than crying in a tree, sir prince," she says as she starts climbing down.

"Legolas."

She stops climbing to look back at him.

"Not prince. My name is Legolas."

"Legolas," she says, rolling the name over on her tongue. She smiles. "And mine is Tauriel."

"Tauriel," he says, looking thoughtful. She nods. Then frowns.

"Did you call me 'red' earlier?"

Legolas laughs.

Later, her mother will gasp in horror when she comes home, hair a mess and face covered in dirt, smiling brightly as she clutches her father's (forbidden) bow. Her mother will keep gasping as she tells her about the prince, and continue to gasp as she hears of their spider hunt, such that Tauriel fears she will collapse.

She doesn't, instead choosing to say some very choice words about safety and common sense and apologies to the king, but Tauriel doesn't care. The prince of Mirkwood is named Legolas and she made him laugh.

* * *

Years later, she will learn why Legolas was crying that day. She will cry similar tears over her own mother's grave, feel the similar unending pain, the crippling feeling of loneliness.

Legolas will be there, though, ignoring whatever looks his father may give him as he pulls her away from the songs of mourning, deeper into the forest. His hand will be warm around hers, like it was that day he stopped her fall, as he leads her up the branches, the crushing weight on her heart lessening as they stand together at the tops of the trees, staring at the blanket of leaves that stretches for miles.

He will promise her, that day, to look after her. That he will not leave, will not break the bond of friendship they have, for anything. And though she does not realize it, at the time, it is the beginning of another Tauriel, someone similar but different, someone stronger. It is also the beginning of the very Legolas-shaped space that etches itself permanently into her heart.

He promises her a good deal that day, but the last thing he promises her, half in jest, is that they will find her spiders and fight them.

Tauriel supposes, then, that they've rather brought the next years on themselves.

* * *

The forest is darker, now, their old spots of play unfamiliar in the gathering gloom. But she can still pierce the darkness with her laughter at the expression on Legolas' face as she flips over him, shooting the spider behind him squarely in the eye.

"Ridiculous," he mutters, knives flashing as he whirls among the screeching spiders. "You are ridiculous."

"I," she declares, as her own knife buries itself in a spider's head. "Am fun. Unlike you."

Legolas gives her a look of mock-injury.

"I am plenty of fun," he says, ducking snapping pincers.

"For a decrepit ent," she says under her breath. Legolas glares at her, yanking his knife out of a spider's side and jumping atop another. He pauses only to gracelessly shove an arrow through its neck before diving forwards, somersaulting neatly to her side.

"There you go," she says with a grin. "You have to make it fun."

Legolas rolls his eyes, but their acrobatics only grow more extravagant as they continue to fend off the spiders. It's a game they've been playing for a long time, but it has yet to lose its fun.

The expressions on the royal guards' faces as their prince catapults himself through the air are always amusing.

They dispatch the spiders with ease, congratulating themselves and the other elves, though they know more will come soon. The spiders are always coming, now, bringing with them a darkness that drowns Tauriel's beloved forest. It makes her angry – the forest is her home, and someone is poisoning it. How can the king sit by and do nothing?

Legolas does not know, he tells her, eyes shadowed. He does not see much of his father, these days. His father has always been distant – no, not always, Legolas reminds her, there was once a time he was open, kind and loving. Tauriel finds his words hard to believe. But at any rate, Thranduil is closing the door further on Legolas, and the pain of the rejection is evident in his eyes.

That makes Tauriel angry, too. A lot makes her angry these days.

But there is still laughter under the darkening trees, and Tauriel is still content to remain here, with Legolas, and protect the forest – her home.

* * *

And then there is Kili.

Kili is… Kili simply _is._ He is a bright, burning light that draws Tauriel in, speaking of worlds she has never seen, things she has only dreamed of. He is unlike any elf she has ever met, open and honest and teasing, eyes glinting as he tells her of mountains and fire moons.

She thinks she loves him.

Legolas does not share her good opinion. He glares at Kili, snapping the dwarves in harsh elvish. And then he seems to close off from her, to draw into himself, the openness on his eyes shuttering closed as she glances back at Kili.

She feels a spark of anger at him. Kili cannot help being a dwarf no more than she can being an elf. Does he not see that?

Can he not see the danger they share, she thinks desperately, heart screaming at her to follow the dwarves as they stand above the river – can he not understand that this _is their fight_?

She stares at him, and there's a spark of pain in her heart as she wonders if she's lost him, if he's shut her out like his father has him.

But there is that small smile, the resignation in his stance, and he follows her.

She can only hope they're not too late.

* * *

Looking back, she realizes that the decision to follow the dwarves was perhaps the most defining choice she's ever made in her life. That one journey into the world, leaving her home to fight for a people other than her own, would stay with her until the end of her days.

Half of her wishes it had never happened.

Kili is dead. His sharp humor, that playful glint in his eyes, the sheer life he radiated – all snuffed out in one sudden, jarring stroke of a sword.

It hurts. It hurts so, so much, such that she doesn't even think as she tells Thranduil of her pain.

Because it was real, he tells her. And maybe it was – it certainly feels like it – but it is not something that feels worth it. Worth the awful pain and loss, the weight of her failure and the grief crippling her as she sits by his corpse.

She remains there for a time, simply _feeling_, like Kili would once have. The eagles are gliding above her, smoke still rising from the battlefield, and she can hear cheers of victory mingled with cries of grief.

It's only when Thranduil approaches her, informing her in cold, clinical tones that she is no longer banished, that she looks for Legolas.

He can't be dead, last she saw him he was fine, he can't be gone as well-

_No_, Thranduil tells her, face tight and eyes raw as he stares at the horizon. _He is not dead._

But he is gone. No one knows how long.

She is so numb from Kili's loss that she should not feel anything at the news.

She does.

* * *

She returns to Mirkwood. She resumes her duties, and Thranduil keeps her as a captain, speaking to her frequently. They have an understanding, a sort of mutual trust – never friendship, but they rely on one another, at least.

They share in the same dizzying loss, the absence of Legolas a raw wound to them both.

At first, she is angry at him. Angry that he didn't understand, that he couldn't understand, angry that he left her. The anger builds, simmering and festering, waiting for his return to explode.

He does return, once. It is a brief visit, his eyes older and shoulders bowed under some unknown weight as he speaks urgently to his father. His father's face, at first peacefully happy, turns to worry, to pain, then to anger. Legolas grown angry in turn, and storms off, headed for the forest.

He seeks her out the next morning. She is still angry at him.

She tells him so.

His face twists, and he apologizes, telling her he could not stay, _he could not go back, can she not understand?_

Whether she can or not, she does not want to. Angry words fly between them like arrows, the darkening forest spreading its darkness to them both, and she only hears the briefest mention of another journey before she storms off.

He leaves the next morning. They do not say goodbye.

Later, Tauriel will wonder what she was thinking.

Later, she will berate herself for being a fool.

Later, she will wish had held her temper, wish she had spent more time with him, had taken the time to tell him what he meant to her – how could she not have? Did she not understand how important it was, after what happened to Kili? After the swift and painful realization of how quickly lives can be ripped away from the earth, from her?

_He is on a journey_, Thranduil says. _A noble one, one that will spell the fate of Middle Earth._

He goes to his death, he says with his eyes, pained as they ever are. She wonders if he feels the same sense of loss, of regret she does.

Legolas cannot die, she thinks, heart beating wildly as she runs through the forest.

Legolas cannot leave her, she thinks, as her hands grasp at branches, pulling and climbing.

Tauriel cannot lose Legolas, she thinks, as she curls up against the rough bark of the tree, hidden in the branches.

Losing her father was painful. Losing her mother was agonizing. Losing Kili broke her heart.

But losing Legolas would destroy her. A world without Legolas is unimaginable, just as a Tauriel without Legolas has now become.

_Be safe_, she thinks desperately, as her eyes blur with tears. _Please, please be safe_.

_Come back alive._

* * *

He does.

Beyond expectancy, beyond all odds, beyond belief, Legolas half-stumbles back into the forest one late night after the War of the Ring, clothes worn from travel, eyes ages older, and with a dwarf at his side.

It's a bizarre scene, so completely unreal that Thranduil himself is stunned into silence, staring at his son with painfully wide eyes. Legolas meets his gaze, sparing a quick glance around the room, face falling as he fails to find who he's looking for.

Her, she thinks wildly, from where she's hidden in the crowd. He's looking for her.

"I have returned, father," he finally says, voice weary but that tiny, half-smile she loves on his lips. And then she really cannot help it any longer.

She's moving forward in seconds, pushing past the crowds and flying towards him with a strangled gasp. He turns to her and his face simply _lights up_, and she realizes that he's home, he's safe, he's _alive_, and he's kept his promise. She feels the deep wrench in her heart again, except this time it's in joy, in complete happiness, because he's warm and alive and holding her close, hands curling around her half-desperately, and _oh, she's missed him _–

And then she simply does not care who is watching, be it the dwarf that came with him or Thranduil himself, because she is going to kiss him right here and right now, in front of everyone.

She does. It feels like coming home.

* * *

Later, after people have finished their aggravating, knowing smiling and Thranduil has finished his own reunion with his son, looking resigned but less unhappy than Tauriel would have expected, Legolas will introduce her to the dwarf.

His name is Gimli, she learns, as the three walk through Mirkwood, Legolas' hand resting lightly in hers. He reminds her of Kili, a bit, but for the first time in years the memory does not bring quite the pain it has. Legolas has clearly found a strong friendship in him, Tauriel finds, looking on with amused surprise as the two halt their retelling of the war to argue over their kill counts.

Legolas' journey has been a long one, and a good deal of it has been in darkness, much as she suspected – but there was also light, for he smiles wider now, his stance relaxed, and the lines in his brow have eased.

He understands, he tells her later, standing beneath their tree, the desire to fight for others, the urge to protect people simply for the sake of them being people. He is wiser now, she thinks, more kingly.

She tells him so.

Legolas laughs.

"Aragorn is the only king out of our Fellowship," he says, hair almost white in the moonlight and eyes soft. "I believe I will only ever be a prince."

"There is nothing wrong with princes," she tells him.

"No," he says. He draws close to her, meeting her gaze with his own, eyes ever-intense. "I suppose you are right."

"I would be your prince, if you would have me," he continues, voice almost a whisper. He is hesitant, refusing to meet her eyes, and she recognizes the stiffness of his shoulders, the underlying fear of rejection still deep-rooted in him.

There is no need for that.

"And if I would?" she asks, slipping her hand in his. His eyes flick up in surprise, and that smile she loves makes an appearance.

"Then," he says, brushing an errant lock of hair from her face. "I would take you to Gondor, to Rohan, to the other great places of the world."

"Oh," she says. The spark of longing, the desire to see a world other than her forest that she had long thought dead, reawakens in her.

"And," he adds, with a smile. "I would take you to the other forests of the world. And we would kill spiders."

"Charming," she mutters, but she's already capturing his lips with her own.

Later, she will leave the forest. Later, she will travel to the great cities of men, meet the people Legolas speaks so highly of, the people that saved the earth.

But now, she stands under the tree, the same tree Legolas caught her from so long ago, and she finds him catching her once again.

Home is behind, home is ahead.

She is Tauriel, and she is of Middle Earth.


End file.
